February

I'm angry with the Americans for being bystanders, but I'm also angry with the Europeans for this constant, odious braying about European civilizational values. The thing that Europe has done consistently since 1945, as it has lost its geostrategic power, is to say that it has gained "cultural and civilizational power." Well, whatever the European values are supposed to be about, they don't involve letting helpless children die in the waters in front of your borders. And it's that nauseating combination of a quarreling incapacity to fix things and the high-minded moral vocabulary being used -- that has got to stop.

US policy has left Europe with the worst of all worlds. Its actions have failed to stop ISIS-trained terrorists from attacking European cities and their failure to stop the Syrian civil war has overwhelmed the continent’s borders with refugees.

Settling refugees successfully in the United States counters Islamic State messages of hate with a message of hope. It will help to reduce radicalization in the refugee camps and, when the war is over, and many of these refugees return to their country, they’ll remember that America stood by them in their time of need.

January

This white paper, prepared by me and a great team of Kennedy School students, argues that it is in America’s national interest to help Europe manage and overcome the refugee crisis by lending strong political support to its European allies, particularly Germany, and by re-asserting its leadership role in refugee resettlement and integration. Any thoughts you might have on the policy suggestions would be welcomed and appreciated.

As Europe rolls out razor wire, a continent loses freedom. I discussed this and other issues associated with the European refugee crisis at Central European University. Video of the lectures can be found in the article below.

For anyone who missed my lecture yesterday, I will be speaking again at 11:30 AM ET tomorrow as part of Central European University's Frontiers of Democracy series. This second lecture is titled "The Refugee Crisis in Europe: How Did It Happen? What Do We Do Now?" and will be available via livestream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/central-european-university.

Returning home after three weeks in South Africa, talking to everyone we could find about the racial politics twenty years after the end of apartheid. I'll be writing about this for the Carnegie council on ethics in international affairs but for now one thought: the politics of an ANC in decline are not pretty and a sense of frustrated promise after Mandela is felt everywhere but on the individual day to day level people seem to get on, side by side, not necessarily together,but working out every day what a post apartheid racial coexistence looks like. I couldn't help feeling good about what we saw. And the country is so beautiful!